DNA Exclusive: Tragic tale of mother abandoned by five sons and what it says about joint family system

New Delhi: There was a time joint families were quite common in India. The familial bond was strong and even 40 to 50 people used to live in the same house. But times have changed and with it our conduct and behavior towards our loved ones also changed. Now joint families are rarely found.

Zee News Anchor Aman Chopra on Thursday (June 3) narrated the tragic tale of a mother who was abandoned by her sons and discussed how the joint family system has changed with time.

The bitter truth is that now many children in India do not want to keep their parents with them. They want the property of their parents, but they do not want to take care of them in their old age.

This was evident in the story of Ramkuwar Bai, a 70-year-old mother who was abandoned by her five sons after the death of her husband.

When her husband was alive, the five sons lived with them. But then they got married and got separated. When the father died and the mother needed her children’s support, none of them came forward.

The five sons sold their ancestral property soon after the death of their father. His father had six acres of land, out of which five and a half acres were sold by the sons. They divided the money among themselves and gave the remaining half an acre of land to a person in the village asking him to take care of their mother. However, this person also sold his share of land and evicted the old lady from the house.

When the matter reached the police, they registered a case against the five sons under the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007.

This is not the first such case in India. In the last few years, there have been many such cases that show people nowadays do not want to live with their elderly parents.

According to the 2001 census, there were 19 crore 31 lakh families in India at that time, out of which 3 crore 69 lakh were joint families. That is, 19 percent of the total families lived together.

But within 10 years this picture changed. In the year 2011, joint families remained only 16 percent of the all families. There were 24.88 crore families in India at that time, out of which 4 crore were joint families.

According to the data released by an NGO ‘HelpAge India’, there are 1176 old-age homes in our country. According to another study, there is a living arrangement for about 97,000 such people in these old age ashrams. But by the year 2028, the number of such people will be 9 lakh, that is, there will be neither room left for these people in their houses, nor will there be space for them in the old age homes.

In our country, there is a Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007 to deal with this issue. Under this, the maintenance and care of the parents have been ensured. This law says that if a child does not take care of his parents, they will have to pay an allowance of up to 10 thousand rupees to their parents every month.

Apart from this, in the year 2017, the Delhi High Court said that if a person misbehaves with their elderly parents they will not be entitled to share in the property of their parents.

Joint families are still found in some cities and villages in India, but these are now getting limited as families are disintegrating.